Obama could have stopped Islamic State but didn’t?

That’s the claim laid out in a Washington Post story that ran today which states that Iraqi officials had asked the White House for help in defeating the terrorist group last summer but the administration didn’t. The story points out and it has been well documented that the White House went gang busters for many years with drone strikes, in Yemen and other places to take out terrorist leaders. But for some reason, he didn’t feel the need to do something last summer.

In a January 2014 interview with the New Yorker, Obama glibly dismissed the Islamic State as a bunch of junior varsity terrorists who posed little danger to Iraq or the United States. “The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” Obama declared. He brushed aside the rise of the Islamic State as just internal Iraqi sectarian violence, something that is not “a direct threat to us or something that we have to wade into.”

One has to wonder what would the situation be in Iraq now if the administration had acted then. Yes, hindsight is 20/20 but why didn’t the intelligence seep into the White House that ISIS or ISIL or the Islamic State was the real deal. The thousands of people who have died and the crisis in Iraq might have been avoided. It might not have, for sure but we’ll never know.

The WaPo story goes on to note that the White House did know about the threat that ISIS posed and still did nothing. A pretty damning story if it is true.

Author: Andy Kravetz

Andy Kravetz has spent most of the past 16 years covering the area's legal system as well as the military. in that time, he's crawled in the mud, flown in transport planes, and written about a man prosecuted for terrorism. This blog will reflect all those interests and then some.
View all posts by Andy Kravetz